


Star of Doriath

by SpaceWall



Series: The Iron King [2]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canonical Character Death, Dormammu I’ve come to Bargain, Enemies to Friends, F/M, First Age, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-19
Updated: 2020-03-19
Packaged: 2021-02-28 18:28:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23221756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpaceWall/pseuds/SpaceWall
Summary: There has only been one elf, in all of history, so blessed by Mandos as to be reborn onto the shores of Beleriand. Lúthien has the one thing in the world he wants the most, and all she needs to know is how. It should be an easy arrangement, really.Stands alone in an AU where Maedhros died on Thangorodrim, but didn’t stay that way.
Relationships: Beren Erchamion/Lúthien Tinúviel, Maedhros | Maitimo & Lúthien Tinúviel
Series: The Iron King [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1669603
Comments: 110
Kudos: 170





	Star of Doriath

**Author's Note:**

> The sequel nobody asked for, but here it is anyways!
> 
> Here’s a repeat of that CW/TW for suicide again! Elves dying is a bit iffy I guess, and this is in line with canon but still. See endnote for spoiler-y details.

Lúthien, Star of her People, was a thief twice. First, she stole a gem from the crown of Morgoth himself, to win her own hand. This theft was lauded and admirable. She was a hero such as elvenkind had rarely known. With her love at her side, Huan, the hound of the Valar at her heel, she could do no wrong.

The second theft was quieter, without dancing or magics, and without friends or lover. She walked into her father’s treasury – who would have stopped her? – and walked out with the jewel tucked under her shirt. The guards did not think her actions worthy of suspicion. Her father didn’t even notice what she’d done, and her mother said not a word about what she knew. Grief heavy, pouch around her neck heavier, Lúthien set out north for frigid Himring. This time, no one tried to stop her as she left. 

The theft she aimed to conduct was far greater, and among all of elvenkind, there was only one who could provide her guidance. Maedhros the Blessed, the Reborn, the Doomless, King of the Noldor. 

She hadn’t believed the rumours when they had first reached her, of an elf who had been dead and walked again, body healed from all the Enemy’s torments. It was Curufin of Nargothrond who had changed her mind, his callous and haughty words as he stroked Huan that had changed her mind. 

“Your father is arrogant,” he had said, hard eyes beating upon her as his hands beat metal and stone into submission. “He believes that he is better than us. Better than any of us ever could be. Why, because he tupped a Maia? Well, Oromë favoured Celegorm, may Námo give him rest, and Ulmo yet favours Finrod the Fool. And of all elves, only Maedhros my brother is reborn into his own body after many years of death.”

Something about his arrogance, his surety, had compelled her. Moreover, she did not believe he could have invoked the name of a Vala in vein with Huan’s head resting on his lap.

Himring, when her weary steed carried her to the gate, surprised her with its beauty. Certainly, it paled in comparison to Nargothrond and Doriath, but it was no mere fortress. This was one of the dual capitals of the Noldor and deserving of the honour. The walls were high and terrible stone, but polished white as the snow that coated them, with intricate designs of gold and silver, so delicate they might as well have been part of the stone its. They depicted, she thought, yet another city again, a foreign and strange one. Tirion upon Túna. On the gates of the city, the images of the Two Trees were wrought, crowned with diamonds. The Noldor had not forgotten their heritage. 

Lúthien, who carried that very heritage under her tunic, felt her heart ache. She wished that, if Beren could not have been with her, at least Huan, steady, loyal Huan, was at her side. She wished that Daeron had loved her in the same way she had loved him, and that her father had been more empathetic, and that her mother felt something, anything at all. But none of those things were true, so she steadied herself, and raised her eyes up to the guards on the gates. 

“I am Lúthien of Doriath,” she named herself, “and I am here to bargain with your king.”

Never had she been so quickly ushered into a throne room in all her life. Not even as a little girl, fallen from a tree and weeping for her ada. 

Maedhros, who bore the Grace of Mandos, sat on his iron throne as a warlord, so kin to Morgoth and yet so different from him. His crown was gold and diamonds all, as befitted one of his blood, but the black makeup around his eyes reminded viewers of a corpse. Even now, he wore armour, and a sword wrought by his father’s hand lay across his lap. He was, without question, one of the most dangerous people Lúthien had ever met. As she entered, he looked up from his sword and spoke. 

“Leave us.” 

Soldiers and courtiers alike, used to the whims of this strange king, filed from the room. Only one, dark of hair and with tree-lit eyes, stayed to whisper a word in the King’s ear before fleeing the scene. In the end he left too, and Maedhros sat alone. Lúthien, only a princess, bowed to him, and called him, “Your Majesty.”

The King lifted his sword, and Lúthien, unarmed, prepared to reach into the song and attempt to strike down the Sacred Lord. Then, with a single, decisive moment, he sheathed it, blade sliding neatly into an invisible gap in the gracefully built metal of the throne. Only the hilt and its shining ruby remained visible. Maedhros, Iron King of the Noldor, set his golden crown on his throne and offered her a bow in return. 

“Princess of Doriath, my deepest condolences, and my apologies for the actions of my brother Curufin. I am told that you suffered under his… hospitality in Nargothrond, and I assure you that the fullest course of justice will be pursued.”

It was a generous offer, to punish the brother of a king. Her own father would not have done it to his own kin. Curufin had not been so ungracious a host, save for the fact that he had not allowed her to leave, to pursue Beren and Finrod and their fourteen followers. The whole fiasco had lasted but a few days. Huan, King Orodreth, and Curufin’s own son had smuggled her out. Yet despite the generosity, it was not what Lúthien was here for.

“You Majesty,” she named him again. “I have come to bargain with you, that we might make a deal in the manner of Dwarves, by contract.”

His eyes were unlike his brother’s, which held fragments the light of the trees in them. She thought that if she had stared into a thousand eyes like Curufin’s, they might have matched a Silmaril. But Maedhros, for all his blessings, had the dim and common eyes of Lúthien’s own kin. Perhaps that was why he lined them so darkly and boldly. To draw attention to that which he was no longer. 

“Come.” He led her out of the center of the room, to a pair of sofas set away in an alcove for courtiers to meet privately in public. They sat across from each other, almost as equals. But then, in a way, they almost were. 

After his miraculous rebirth, Maedhros had renounced the crown of the High King in favour of his Uncle, the less favoured High King Fingolfin, but it hadn’t been all too effective a process. As word spread among the Noldor that two of their number – Maedhros and Fingon, favourite of Manwë – seemed to have escaped some portion of the doom, it had been difficult to maintain a single monarchy. In the end, they had settled on a largely decentralized system, with lesser kings in Nargothrond and Vinyamar, among others, and High Kings in Himring and Barad Eithel. But by that first recantation of the crown, Maedhros was only the son of a King, as Lúthien was. In that sense, they were equal. 

They were equal in another way also. Of all elvenkind living, only they had looked into the eyes of Morgoth, had seen the crown of Silmarils burning on his brow. They had seen and felt the terror of Angband in its worst circles. Other Thralls had escaped, but the true face of Morgoth was known to so few. It was to this kinship that Maedhros reached out, as they sat in his frigid Kingdom. 

“I must beg your forgiveness also for the way I adorn myself.” He gestured to his eyes, to his iron throne. “I invoke what he has done to me so they do not forget that, despite the ways in which I appear as fair as I was born, I have been a thrall.”

It was a terrible memory to be forced to keep alive, but Lúthien thought she understood. “It is yours.” There was something to be gained from that which they had seen. “It is a relief, to speak to someone who knows what he is.”

With another elleth, one who was more comfortable, who had not been so categorically wronged by Maedhros’s family, he would have taken her hand and whispered words of encouragement and comfort. But instead, this was Lúthien of Doriath, and so instead he said, “I would that you had not been forced to see, but I commend your bravery in the face of it. And that of Beren also.”

And so, the topic on the table. In truth, both of them knew why she was there. Maedhros had known from the second he heard that she was at the gate. It only waited to be put to words. 

“I will give you what you wish – whatever you wish – if you tell me how to win my husband back.”

The sorrow took over his face. After the harshness and coldness of Curufin, Lúthien was surprised to find that she could read Fëanor’s firstborn as easily as his Tengwar. There was such pity in him. 

“Lúthien,” he said, far too familiar, “if I could repeat the miracle that brought me here, my brother’s body wouldn’t hang from the gates where mine did.”

“I saw him.”

If news of Maedhros’s rebirth had been met by disbelief in Doriath, then that disbelief had been matched only by the shock at the end of the Dagor Bragollach. It had come to the edges of Melian’s spells in the form of a song, carried on every breeze. A lament, for Fingolfin, who had struck Morgoth seven blows with his blade, and for Celegorm, Son of Fëanor, who had fired arrow after arrow into the ashen and tarnished flesh of the fall Vala. Fingolfin’s body had been carried away, after it had been crushed beneath Morgoth’s foot. Celegorm, who’d fallen from an orcish arrow in his neck, had not been offered the same mercy.

Lúthien steeled herself. As Maedhros offered her honesty, so she would give it to him in return. “the marks from Celegorm’s arrows still mar the enemy’s flesh. They ooze black and orange pus, like molten stone that is crusting over.” Huan had whimpered at the sight of his master’s body, had pawed at the ground in misery. “He never lost the love of his hound, even to the end. I could feel the depth of Huan’s affection. His grief.”

Lúthien had no siblings, but she’d buried so much love, so much friendship, this past year. In her eyes, Maedhros found real understanding. He bowed his head, eyes slipping closed for a brief moment in mourning. By instinct – surely not her mother’s, for when had she ever shown such love? Not her father’s either, for he would have held Curufin’s sins against Maedhros and Celegorm both – she reached out and took the hand of the King in her own. The callouses on his fingers, the roughness of them, would have been utterly foreign to the nobility of Doriath, found only in rangers, in peasants or servants, and in Beren. His eyes snapped open and he looked upon her with complete bewilderment. 

Maedhros was a diplomat, but also a skilled manipulator. He had meant to show Lúthien vulnerability so she would not fear him. So she would go from here and tell her father that the Sons of Fëanor were not to be hated. He had not intended… this. But here they were. He held her hand in turn, enveloping her small, thin fingers in his own broad ones. 

“Thank you,” he said. “I am more grateful for this than you know. But I cannot delude you. You should not make a deal with me in the belief I can help you. And you must not tell me if you have it, lest you trigger my oath. Let us both speak under the assumption that your father still holds that which mine burned for.”

It was so heavy around her neck, but she knew what had to be done. “If you didn’t bring yourself back, then who did?”

King Fingon, perhaps? The miracles were always attributed with the Eagle for Fingon and the Rebirth for Maedhros, but maybe it was the other way around, in truth. Or perhaps it was someone else entirely. Perhaps the reason Celegorm despite his heroic actions had been left to rot was that he had already been given the greatest of all boons. He had, after all, taken the place of dishonour that had once been reserved for his eldest brother. 

“My father. He spoke to Námo not of my virtue, but of his love for me. It was the powerful words of Fëanor, the greatest of the Noldor, who melted the Doomsman’s heart.” His other hand came up to gesture again at his lined eyes. “My part in the miracle is just another piece of theatre. To keep the Noldor in line.”

Their hands remained joined, but Lúthien stared at him. It was the most shocking thing she could have imagined. Fëanor, who had led the Noldor into darkness, was one of the most blessed among them. He had brought down Mandos himself with a love story. 

Lúthien didn’t think either of her parents had ever loved her that much. Oh, her father had coveted her, certainly, but the love required to send a child away, to a place where they might suffer, so that they could have agency over their own fate? That was a love she’d never experienced, save from Beren. Beren, who loved her without wanting to own her, to control her. 

She reached into her shirt and withdrew the pouch holding the Silmaril. Pulling her hand from Maedhros’s, she pressed the closed bag into his palm and stood. 

“Why?” He asked her. “I cannot give you that which you wish. I would have let you free by deceiving the oath.”

She had never doubted it, despite all Curufin’s actions to the contrary. “I know. But you have told me everything I need to know, and for that I am grateful.” Leaning down, she pressed a kiss to his cheek. 

He stood and, hanging his prize under his armour, took her hand again. She looked down at their joined fingers in silent question. 

“I also know,” he whispered, although they were alone, “what it is to believe the one you love ever lost. To watch all your hopes go up in flames, despite all you have already sacrificed. I will stay with you, until the time comes.”

She had planned to be alone. To walk north into the cold and the darkness until hopelessness overwhelmed her. But if this worked, who was to say that she, like Maedhros, would not be returned to her own body. In that case, it might not be so hard to be within Himring’s walls. With a friend.

“Thank you,” she said, and wove their fingers together.

He shook his head, just a little. “Princess Lúthien, you have given me a piece of my freedom. My freedom from violence, from what I feared the oath would drive me to be. You never have to thank me for anything.”

If this worked, she would owe him her freedom, too. Beren had freed her to be a person, not a princess or a statue. Maedhros would have returned that to her. 

“I think you are a very good person, King Maedhros. Whatever my father would think.”

That won a smile from him. “Your goodness was never in doubt, Lúthien of Doriath. But I find myself yet surprised by your generosity. Few would offer such generosity when so wounded as you have been by the hands of my kin.”

Oh poor, stupid, cruel Curufin. “Your brother did not more ill by me than my father did. And his son did far better. If I don’t make it back… give Celebrimbor my love.”

He led her from the throne room, past corridors of gorgeous tapestries, first abstract, then historical and then, as they stepped through a doorway into a room with a loom taking up much of the centre, the deeply personal. On one wall, she recognized Curufin and a much younger Celebrimbor, and Maedhros himself. It was a fine likeness, though his eyes seemed very different. There were others in the tapestry, arm in arm. Two with a great likeness who must have been the twins Amrod and Amras. There was the black-haired elf she’d seen in the throne room earlier who must have been Maglor the Horse-Lord. And another who, by elimination, was Caranthir the Dark. And there, with Huan curled at his feet, was Celegorm. The body, rotted by the time she saw it, was unrecognizable as the smiling, bright ellon in the tapestry. 

She looked between Maedhros and the loom. “Your craft, my King?”

He sat, wordless, and began to work. Lúthien took her place on the sofa beneath the tapestry of Fëanor’s line. It was warmer here than in the rest of the palace, perhaps because the fire had been burning long before they’d arrived. Better than dying somewhere cold and lonely. The periodic rubbing of thread on thread as Maedhros wove was the only sound but for the crackling of the hearth. 

She pulled her feet out of her boots and curled up, letting her eyes flicker shut. Maedhros’s movement stuttered and then started again. 

“Do you want me to give any message to your father?” He asked her. 

If Maedhros admitted that Lúthien had died in front of him without acting, her father would instantly declare war. “Tell him I went North, if he asks. I’d have my mother told differently, but she wouldn’t think to ask if he didn’t. Do you want me to give any message to your father?”

She thought he gave a huff of laughter. “Just… my love. But you won’t see him. He’s a prisoner. Celegorm too, if by any chance he crosses your path.”

They shared a moment of warm silence. Lúthien let herself sink into the song from which she’d arisen, feeling the theme begin to swell as it called her spirit like a falcon come to roost. 

“Maedhros,” she said, voice sounding utterly small to her ears, “could you sing for me?”

He gave a nervous chuckle. “Nothing fit for a princess. What about a story? My brothers always said I was good at those.”

“Yes, please.”

His hands stilled at work. Even the fire seemed to quiet in anticipation of his words. “This is the story of how Uinen, Lady of the Sea at Rest, won her heart from Morgoth. She stole away from him that which she loved the most. Ossë, the Storm, her equal and opposite, her love for all the ways in which they were different.”

In the end, her passing was but the work of a calm moment, without even a little pain.

**Author's Note:**

> Spoiler-y details: Lúthien dies, by her own choice, with the explicit intent to bargain with Námo and win her and Beren’s lives in turn. Since this worked in canon, you can assume it does here. 
> 
> I love this AU like a lot even though as far as I know nobody else does. I have so many more ideas I didn’t even get to fit in here, like, Fingon is out there somewhere being co-king of the Noldor, and the Eagles that brought Fingolfin’s body to Turgon were like “fyi Celegorm is /also/ dead” and Maeglin was very upset about it. Also I fully think that Fëanor has spent the last few centuries becoming Námo’s favourite adviser on elvish matters because Fëanor is such a /person/ that he brings invaluable skills at being-fallible. It was a real nasty shock for poor Fingolfin who showed up having got Fëanor’s son killed to find Fëanor sitting at the right hand of the Doomsman of the Valar.


End file.
